


A Life Worth Living

by Saraste



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Domestic, F/F, Female Bilbo Baggins/Female Thorin Oakenshield, Femslash, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Messing with timelines (and genders) all willy nilly, Partial Fix-It, Podfic Welcome, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rule 63, Shirewives, The Shire, bagginshield summer surprise, meaning that Frodo has been born earlier than in canon (i think?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 07:04:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12227988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: Bilbo has settled into Bag End together with Thorin, to share the rest of their lives together, but the shadows of the past are sometimes long and hard to shake off.





	A Life Worth Living

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Bagginshield Summer Surprise, for the prompt: "I swear, if you splash me one more time!"
> 
>  
> 
> Beta'd by [katajainen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen/pseuds/katajainen). THANK YOU! %hearts; All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Written mostly during a summer-like day in September. This was easy writing, once I got the hang of this story.

The rolling hills of the Shire are covered in flowers in desperate bloom as summer is coming to it’s close, the fields are brimming with ripening harvest, and all thoughts of any sort of adventuring, big or small, are far away from Bilbo Baggins’ head as she lets herself enjoy in the quiet domesticity of her existence, which is adventure enough for the rest of her days.

Her hands are busy with the dish towel as she dries what Thorin washes after their second breakfast, her mind is already thinking about elevensies and ahead. Her larder is stocked and well-kept and she can answer to the needs of a dwarven appetite and that of a growing hobbit lad. She can hear him outside, can pick out his laughter from among the other hobbit children in their back garden, where they are chasing each other about, and it’s a good thing to hear, for Frodo, like Thorin, did not laugh for the longest time. Those two have been so good to one another. 

SPLASH!

Bilbo’s trail of thought is rudely disrupted by sudsy water splashed onto her face. Her hands still and she takes a deep breath, controlling the urge to swat at her dwarf around the ears with the dishtowel. Instead, she takes up the sword of words. ‘Why, pray tell, did you splash me for, dearest?’ she inquires, her tone telling Thorin just what she thinks about her silly antics, about the self-satisfied smile on her lips, so reminiscent of another smile on a younger face, now forever sleeping in stone. 

She has to take another deep breath, because those thoughts still hurt, she cannot unremember the long nights and days at the beginning, when it was Thorin who did not smile, who could not bear to laugh, who was drawn and quiet and so very overburdened by his grief. Bilbo knows that it’s a disservice to not remember, to forget, but the grief is still too raw for her, still a searing thing striking when she isn’t expecting it, it has yet to dull to an ache. To mourning and remembrance.

Her heart lifts as she looks at the smile on her beloved’s face, a smile which reaches blue eyes. Thorin is still often solemn but has found joy in living again, has begun to make peace with her loss and settle into an easy life filled with little mundane joys instead of the high-stakes existence in the court of the Mountain she would have deserved to rule but couldn’t bear to after the price that had been paid for it.

‘You were lost in your head, âzyungel,’ Thorin teases,cocking her head so the light from the window catches her marriage beads, giving Bilbo a different kind of pang, for those boys had seen those, at least, ‘what reason is there to brood when the day is so lovely and our lad laughs so joyously?’

‘None at all,’ Bilbo sighs, affecting a smile but feeling like it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, even if it warms her to hear Thorin call Frodo  _ their lad _ . She turns back to her drying and Thorin back to her washing, if the soft clink of crockery is anything to go by. 

It doesn’t take long for another splash of water to meet Bilbo’s face, this time it’s enough to dribble down and start soaking her shirt, making it cling to her skin. She looks up and Thorin isn’t smiling any longer but looks at her pensively. Bilbo herself teeters on the edge of getting annoyed, snapping at Thorin, yet doesn’t, her ire dulled by melancholy.

‘Are you thinking of them?’ Thorin asks softly and Bilbo can hear the pain in her voice, can see it in her eyes, in the shortness of Thorin’s still grief-shorn beard.

‘I often think of them, of you, of how things  _ should _ have been different.’ Bilbo wrings at the dishtowel in her hands fretfully. She doesn’t voice everything she wants to say because she doesn’t want to hurt Thorin, or herself.

Thorin steps to her and cups her face in her big wet hands and looks into her. Her body is warm and familiar pressed against Bilbo and her bulk, as always, makes Bilbo feel sheltered, even when it’s Thorin who needs sheltering more, in her opinion, from her guilt and the misinformed tongue-wags of the Shire who dare to judge her beard and taking up smithing, which is not considered a proper profession because of her sex, although there is never any gossip over the quality of Thorin’s smithing. 

‘Things are not different,’ Thorin says, firm and clearly convinced of the veracity of her words, ‘our life,  _ mine _ , is good here and I wish to not spend my time with you railing against things which I cannot change, however much I might want to, constantly mourning those I have lost and forgetting on living.’ She stops and swallows.’My sister-sons would not want that.’

‘And Dís would give you a good hiding, if she knew.’ Bilbo’s meeting of her sister-in-law had been brief but had left an impression. While Bilbo had tried to pay attention to the mother of those lost boys, her main focus had been on Thorin, who hadn’t been… Bilbo hates knowing how much they have all lost and hates the impression she got of Dís being stronger than Thorin in her grief, since it can be argued that, as a mother, she lost more, even if Thorin loved her boys like her own.

‘I just wish…’ Bilbo starts, but quiets as Thorin’s thumb swipes away the tears on her cheeks.

‘As do I, every day, and will do so for the rest of my days,’ she brings Bilbo’s hand, towel and all, against her breast, over where her heart beats steadily, ‘but this is our life now and I want it to be a happy one. As happy as we can make it.’

‘And it is,’ Bilbo affirms and it’s nothing but the truth, for complete happiness would require for that haunted look to leave Thorin’s eyes and would require the forever silent laughter of two young dwarfs who died too young. She reaches up to her tiptoes to press her lips to Thorin’s, is swept up off her feet by strong arms not soon after and they cling, lost in each other.

They are only brought apart by a demanding ‘Aunt Bilbo! Aunt Thorin!’ from the doorway of the kitchen, and come to realize that the laughter outside has subsided and faunts being quiet is never a good sign, as both know from experience.

‘What is it, Frodo, my lad?’ Bilbo inquires, bracing herself on hands holding onto Thorin’s shoulders. She huffs a bit as Thorin seems content to hold her up where her feet do not meet the floor. She wriggles some. ‘Put me down, you!’

Thorin’s grin is all cheek and she radiates such life and contentedness that it tugs at Bilbo. ‘Why should I, when you fit my arms so perfectly?’

Frodo, Bilbo notes, is not even slightly perturbed by these proceedings, as the lad has grown used to it all now. But as nice being held by Thorin is, and being secure in the knowledge that she will not be dropped, she would still much prefer to have her feet against the floor-boards and given a chance to find out what Frodo needs and why there is silence in the garden beyond.

‘Because I am asking you, as your beloved wife and one true love, to be put down and you should heed my request.’

‘I do not think it affects Frodo being able to tell what he needs, if you are held thus or not.’

Bilbo harrumphs but gives up. She loves her dwarf and the fact that she can tease and not forget to live even with the burden of the past, the grief of it all. ‘Well, then. What is it that you wanted, Frodo?’

Frodo gifts them a wide smile and declares: ‘May we have pie, auntie?’

‘Pie?’

‘Pie.’

‘Well,’ Bilbo ruminates, ‘I do not have pie in the pantry, seeing as you two rascals did away with the latest just yesterday at tea, so I shall have to bake one. Do you think you can wait for your pie?’

‘Yes.’ Frodo is nothing but accommodating when it comes to pie, which is one of his favourite foods, a trait he shares with Thorin.

Bilbo pushes at Thorin’s arms. ‘If you do not let me down, Thorin, I cannot bake anything.’

Thorin’s hands wander a little as she lowers Bilbo down, nothing too unseemly that will scar poor Frodo for life, Bilbo is quite sure, yet it makes her blush up to her hairline, especially that pinch to her bottom. 

Bilbo  _ does _ end up slapping Thorin around the ears with the dishtowel and runs her out of the house to go and pick some berries for the promised pie. She leans in the doorway, looking out at her dwarf and their lad picking the last of the summer’s strawberries, and she smiles.  

There are enough strawberries for a pie in the basket despite the evidence of a lot of strawberries also having been eaten. It is moments like this which make Bilbo awed at how easily Thorin has accommodated into the Shire and the small scale of their lives. Although it should not be surprising, for had Thorin not spent most of her days either on the road or in small settlements, though Bilbo often thinks of the privation her wife has borne. She has vowed to herself that Thorin will not go hungry as long as she is under Bilbo’s roof and has happily noted her figure filling into most pleasing curves after the strains of long travel, during the Quest and… after. 

The rest of the dishes have been washed and cleared out and Bilbo has set the table for elevensies, having had the kitchen to herself while her dwarf and lad took their time in the kitchen garden. The pie will do well for afternoon-tea and she might even go through the trouble of making custard to go with it, or maybe whip up some cream.

‘You both need to wash your faces,’ she admonishes when the basket is presented to her and she has had a moment to regard red-smeared faces.  _ It’s just juice _ , she keeps reminding herself, even when it’s not that red, although smeared well on hands after picking juicy strawberries it stains… Bilbo cannot handle black currants, cannot eat them, cannot drink black currant cordial because if it spills it’s too much like blood. But she has made her peace with the changes the quest brought about in her and tries to be happy with what,  _ who _ , she got in return. Most days. 

‘Come on, little pebble,’ Thorin scoops Frodo up into her arms. She buzzes a kiss into Frodo’s dark hair.

‘I’m not a pebble, I’m big!’ an indignant voice counters Thorin. ‘Pebbles are  _ babies _ , auntie Thorin, you told me so.’

‘So I did, indeed,’ Thorin’s voice affirms as he settles Frodo down and takes the basin of water and wash-cloth Bilbo offers. Her voice is terribly fond with just a hint of pain; this most likely isn’t the first time that Thorin has… 

Bilbo goes to ruffle Frodo’s hair, ‘You must forgive Thorin, Frodo, my dear lad, as she is so very old and to her you’re but a sapling.’

Thorin looks at her, hands busied in wiping Frodo’s face clean, ‘Not that very old, surely, am I?’ And there is a hint in her words which sends a shudder go through Bilbo. She carefully looks only at Thorin’s eyes, not her red-smeared lips.

Bilbo’s fingers find the marriage bead in Thorin’s hair and she brings it to her lips for a kiss, still wondering how she can make Thorin blush so fiercely as she does so, not having grown up in the culture in which kisses to beads are such an intimate gesture. In the gentle Shire they are not unseemly, just a way for her to make her dwarf blush when they are out and about. ‘Ancient,’ she murmurs before she stands on her tiptoes to kiss Thorin’s lips, for life must be good when her lips are there to kiss and they have a happy young lad in their lives and...

SPLASH!

Bilbo and Thorin both look down at the unrepentantly grinning young hobbit boy who has just thrown the water all over them, and himself, if truth be told. Bilbo separates herself from Thorin to give Frodo one of her patented no-nonsense glowers, hands on her hips and feet firmly planted on the floor, now slippery with soapy water. She takes in Thorin as well with her stare. ‘Right,’ she declares, ‘you are both going into the washroom so my poor kitchen is spared this nonsense and I can actually get some baking done. And you too, Thorin. No more splashing water around in my kitchen!’

Frodo hesitates, even when he has taken hold of Thorin’s hand. His blue eyes look at Bilbo imploringly. ‘Will you make the pie?’

Bilbo sighs and bends to kiss the top of his head, then ruffles his dark curls. ‘I will, since I do not have any other plans for those strawberries. Now off with you both!’

Thorin flings Frodo up into her arms and they disappear into the depths of Bag End, laughing, and Bilbo looks after them, her heart full. Yes, life is still good and happiness might be tinged with regret but is all the sweeter for it.

  
  
  



End file.
